In the Shadow of Denali by Jonathan Waterman

Author:Jonathan Waterman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781461745785
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2017-06-10T16:00:00+00:00

In 1983 Roger wrote an understated article for Mountain magazine that showed the power of the mountain while omitting our near collapse as human beings. Will also wrote a concise account of the climb, laced with a didactic evolution of Alaskan climbing, for the 1983 American Alpine Journal.

According to the long-held Victorian traditions of mountaineering and the “sacred bond of the rope,” writers rarely divulge any disagreeable personality details from a climb. Nonetheless, while living in Colorado during the winter of 1982-83, I published in 1983 issues of Climbing and Appalachia a forthright, stream-of-consciousness rendering about our failings. Will, still in denial, subsequently initiated a letter-writing campaign to many of our mutual friends.

Will even tried to solicit Roger’s support against me, but Roger refused to take sides or make any judgment about who was at fault. Nearly a year after the climb, Roger mailed a letter to me. “You have my respect,” he wrote, “well earned for the guts and determination you came through with. . . . As for Will, I’m real sorry for the way it turned out and the selfishness he showed—I thought I got on well with Will in the initial stages but my feelings now are of a lack of trust. In that I’m sure he’d not think twice of dumping anyone to save his own neck.

“So in all it was good to do the climb but the unity or lack of it leaves a hollow feeling. Please don’t get the idea that I do not put myself to blame, I do. I’m sorry I didn’t show more consideration to your plight. The trip was an expensive lesson.”

After surgeons overhauled Roger’s knee, he returned to Alaska in May 1983 and limped up an unclimbed, saber-edged ridge on the coveted Mount Deborah. Afterward, he was nearly arrested in the sleepy hamlet of Cantwell, two hours north of Talkeetna, for counting his own change out of the cash register. When he got to Talkeetna his smile lit my afternoon.

Several years later, still gimpy, Roger pulled a sled to the South Pole, retracing the footsteps of Scott. He refused to carry a radio, his support ship sank, and he went into six-figure debt. In 1991 he and a partner flashed up the Diamir Face on Nanga Parbat, one of the boldest, most idealistic, and unpublicized Himalayan climbs in years.

While Roger had moved on with his life, Will and I were still trying to come to grips with the winter climb. One weekend he and I arranged to meet on a hillside in Utah. He greeted me with the usual gibe from ten years earlier: “Still dating those fourteen-year-olds?” The conversation further faltered as Will accused me of slandering his name, and as we both tried to wrest apologies from one another, the din of Salt Lake City below grew louder and we stopped talking altogether.

Will went on to bag a new route on Annapurna IV in the Himalaya. He got married, splintered his leg as a result of a long fall in the Alps, and fathered a daughter.

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